Vladimir Kramnik defeated Luke McShane in a nice game for the Russian to keep the pressure on Carlsen at the top of the leaderboard. Kramnik will not give up his title without a fight!

Vishy Anand's game was the first to finish, and at last the world champion scored a win! Anand defeated Gawain Jones with the black pieces to finally make a positive mark on the tournament.

Finally, Hikaru Nakamura weaved a mating net around Judit Polgar's exposed King to make it four out of four decisive games in the fifth round at the London Chess Classic.

Lev Aronian (left) took his turn in the commentary room with Danny King and Nigel Short (right)

.

Magnus Carlsen turned around a worse position to beat Mickey Adams

.

.

Vladimir Kramnik defeated Luke McShane

.

.

Vishy Anand completed a bad day for the English players, beating Gawain Jones.

.

.Judit Polgar lost to Hikaru Nakamura

.

.

The standings after 5 rounds (3-1-0 scoring)

Name

Fed

Elo

Gms

Pts

Carlsen, Magnus

NOR

2848

5

13

Kramnik, Vladimir

RUS

2795

5

11

Nakamura, Hikaru

USA

2760

5

8

Adams, Michael

ENG

2710

4

7

Anand, Viswanathan

IND

2775

4

6

Aronian, Levon

ARM

2815

4

4

Jones, Gawain C B

ENG

2644

5

2

McShane, Luke

ENG

2713

4

1

Polgar, Judit

HUN

2705

4

1

.

The 2012 London Chess Classic runs from 1-10 December , with one rest day on the 5th December. Games start at 14:00 GMT, except round four (16:00), and the final round (12:00).

The time control is 2 hours for 40 moves, then 1 hour for 20 moves, then 30 minutes to finish. The 'Bilbao' style 3-1-0 scoring system is being used.

In the event of tied scores at the end of the competition, tie breaks are 1) # of wins 2) # of wins with black, 3) head-to-head result. If these mathematical tiebreakers are not enough, then there will be rapid tie-break games and if needed, a final sudden death game.

Comments

It is a mistake for chess players to play against computers. Carlsen has stated in the past that he does not plays against computers.

Chess tournaments are won against human chess players that fall into swindles that start with a slightly questionable move that creates a position that is difficult to evaluate when there is time pressure and the opponent ends up missing the right move which in turns leads him into a bad endgame position, and the rest is matter of endgame technique which Carlsen is becoming little by little the best in the chess world.

For a swindle to work it needs to be played at the right moment, after several hours of playing and when the opponent is under time pressure, and Carlsen has become an expert in timing this type of opportunities, and the other GM are falling into them

As a matter of fact last week Karjakin just won a game against Morozevich with a swindle that originated with a questionable move, the Houdini suggested move resulted in draw.

Computers play to "not to lose", they will never play a calculated risky questionable move in a position that is about equal in time pressure because computers just follows a string of commands, they can not think "what if I make this questionable natural looking move and if my opponent do not find the correct move because of build up stress due to time pressure and the fact that we have been playing for almost four hours (first time-control) or six hours (second time-control) I will end up with a slightly better winning position." This is what Carlsen has become an expert in evaluating during top level chess games. This is what is known as the psychology of chess and playing against computers do not improves this very important chess skill. Playing against computers kills this chess skill.

"Capablanca’s games generally take the following course: he begins with a series of extremely fine prophylactic maneuvers, which neutralize his opponent’s attempts to complicate the game; he then proceeds, slowly but surely, to set up an attacking position. This attacking position, after a series of simplifications, is transformed into a favorable endgame, which he conducts with matchless technique." – Aaron Nimzowitsch

what i meant its that i can't remember his games, they are not exciting, he usually arrives to the endgame with a slight advantage and then scores the win... i dont see exciting and risky combinations... on the other hand i can tell u that i do remember a lot of exciting Kasparov games, Fisher games, Morphy games, etc.

He's so good and yet a little boring, maybe its the nature of today's chess

"Magnus ... he just improve his position very slowly with each move to win every game... he's like a computer"I'm not sure that I agree with this. Sometimes, yeah, he's like a computer in the same way that any top GM is, i.e. he plays pretty accurate moves. But if you see a computer analysis of some of these London games, you may notice that a few of his key moves seem just a little bit sub-optimal from the computer's perspective -- maybe in a way that is slightly deliberate. That is, he sometimes plays moves that are not quite 'the best' objectively, but which keep the position just a little more unclear to human eyes. Then, when his opponent makes a mistake in this unclear environment, he pounces with pretty severe accuracy. It's a nice strategy, which might win some games that a computer would just draw, despite being technically 'better' in its play.

@geographybuff: Black is threatening Nf3+ Kh1 Rh4#. Nf3+ can only be stopped by Rf7, but after Kxf7 (obviously) black has exactly the same problems. He can also play Be7 to stop Rh4#, but then Nf3+ Kh1 Rg1#. So black has 1 desperate move to delay mate, but otherwise it's just unavoidable mate in 2.

Edit: Drak0dan has a longer variation to delay mate. Point stays the same (and I missed Bg2#.. that's a lot of mate threats at the same time :p)

Help us finish translating:

We are working hard to make Chess.com available in over 70 languages. Check back over the year as we develop the technology to add more, and we will try our best to notify you when your language is ready for translating!